Once the sun finally rose, I completed a speedy tour around Fort William but there wasn't much that caught my attention. On cold, wet, windy days, everything just looks pale and lifeless.

Leaving the empty town behind, we jumped behind the wheel for another attempt at locating Ben Nevis. The task was again disrupted by fog, severely restricting our field of vision. We drove for an eternity down a single-lane, deserted road, stopping at the beginning of a walk through a gorge. We didn't bother with the walk (the rain turned us off) but the surrounding scenery was mind-blowing. The mountains, the snow, the waterfalls all combined to produce a movie set-like landscape that would have been even more spectacular on a sunny day.

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The views on the way to Glasgow somehow became even more dramatic - taller mountains, faster rivers, bulging lakes, and snow carpeting the ground all the way down to the road. But that was not what we remembered about this drive. Yet again, the wind was at hurricane levels, the roads were narrow, and there was masses of oncoming traffic. As has happened several times now, we heard our skylight pop open when a truck passed by us. Danny climbed into the back and closed it again, no problem. Until we met the next truck, which blew the entire skylight unit right off the van. I immediately pulled over so Danny could jump out and run down the road to search for our two-day-old skylight (he found it in a ditch). Upon inspection, we discovered that the skylight had snapped where it connects to the van, and we knew there was no repairing it. The only consolation we had was that the break was in the original skylight, not the new translucent screen we had just purchased. As it was raining we needed a rapid solution, so we placed the skylight back into the hole in the roof and secured it with our elastic clothes lines. It worked surprisingly well, but we weren’t taking any chances - every time another truck thundered past, Danny sprang up and clenched the skylight tight with both hands. Every time we think we have solved all of our campervan problems, another one comes along.